The Dislocated was the first band I was ever in and especially around the holidays I get nostalgic for those carefree days so suffer with me as we take a trip into the wayback machine of my life and tell the story of one of Murfreesboro’s finest punk bands.
It was late summer of 1987 when Mark Taylor invited me over to see the cover band he had started with his brother Mike and drummer Tim Baird or maybe I just invited myself over since that was often the Wally way. They were pretty good even if they were playing fairly mainstream classic rock and roll. It was all mostly hard edged, but Hendrix, ZZ Top, Iron Maiden, The Cars, The Cult, and REM weren’t my idea of what a rock and roll band could be about. I was all for doing original material however bad it might be. I’d been trying to get Taylor to come around to liking Black Flag and punk rock for years, but it wasn’t until I started hanging out with him and his brother that summer that I was able to make inroads. Naturally I managed to win over his younger brother first.
Mark and I were a couple of years out of high school, but Mike was just starting at our alma mater Riverdale. I starting driving Mike over to the high school to watch the Warriors play basketball (the 87/88 squad was one of their last decent teams) and I would always play some crazy stuff on the way over. I was into bands like Descendents, S.O.D., Anthrax, Megadeth, The Replacements, Husker Du, Minutemen, Guns N Roses, Ramones, and Metallica at the time. Soon I had the younger Taylor digging speed metal and punk and the nature of the cover band was soon to change for good.
I spent most of time working at a local pizza joint. I had dropped out of college telling everyone I was just disillusioned, but the real truth was I was just flat out lonely on campus. Life became a mundane exercise in work, party, sleep and then repeat. The parties were just booze fests with my co-workers and there was no real purpose of joy to them. The only meaningful thought patterns I was getting came from music and magazines. One of those magazines was Thrasher. I liked looking at the skateboarding pictures. I hadn’t ridden a board since junior high, but suddenly at the age of 20 in the middle of 1987 I bought a Vision Mark Gonzales model skateboard. I began to live out Minor Threat’s lyrics, “I might be an adult, but I’m a minor at heart”. Most of my 20’s would later be termed the “Lost Years” by some of my more career minded friends, but I look back with pride at what I accomplished then.
Skateboarding was another way I grew closer to the Taylor family that year since both Mike and Mark were goofing around after practice with a couple of Powell Peralta decks. I was having no luck at getting the Taylor’s to try writing original material so I decided to give them a boost by writing some lyrics for them. I came up with a song destined to not be a classic, “Work Sucks”, but Mike slapped two monster guitar chords together and our first collaboration was done. It was noisy, loud, and with hindsight it was actually pretty lame, but it was decided that I was going to be the lead vocalist for the Taylor’s cover band as it quickly morphed into a speed metal punk band performing Black Flag, DOA, Black Sabbath, Danzig, and S.O.D. covers along with the one original. When I suffered a fairly serious accident at work – I burned my left hand while emptying a spaghetti cooker – I suddenly had a few weeks of free time to try and mastermind some more songs with Mike. We got nowhere fast when Mark got to goofing around on the bass one day and within minutes our second original was composed. We made it a tribute song to one of Mike’s crazy friends who liked to hang around while we practiced – “This One’s For Paul” – and it was modeled on the Anthrax rap rock song of “I’m The Man” which had been one of our favorites all summer. I only lasted a couple of more months at the pizza place after I recovered, eventually quitting to attend a Mojo Nixon concert in Nashville. It would be back to college in 1988 and rock and roll with the Taylor’s and Tim Baird.
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